DRY LAND FARMING IN EASTERN COLORADO 
19 
mulch. It is necessary to pulverise the ground quickly after every 
such rain to restore the earth mulch, as a week’s delay may mean the 
loss of water equal to an inch of rainfall. Light showers do not 
usually destroy the mulch. 
On account of the winds, evaporation is very rapid just after the 
frost goes out of the ground in the spring and an earth mulch should 
be established as soon as the ground is dry enough to work. Evapora¬ 
tion is very rapid from stubble fields after the grain has been cut, 
and an earth mulch should be made with a disc harrow as soon as the 
grain is shocked. 
Where the surface is hard, the earth mulch will have to be made 
with a disc harrow; where the surface is mellow, a spike toothed har¬ 
row will pulverize the soil sufficiently. A four-horse disc harrow 
should be used for economy of time. A man having five horses 
attached to a twenty-four foot spike tooth harrow can put a mulch 
on thirty to sixty acres a day. 
When the annual rainfall drops much below twelve inches and the 
rainfall during the growing season below five inches, it is difficult, and 
often impossible, to raise a profitable crop. The land can be fallowed 
one season and cropped the next, the one crop having the use of what 
moisture can be stored from two years’ rainfall. During the season 
that no crop is raised an earth mulch must be maintained, and to do 
this it is usually necessary to till the surface about every ten days, and 
-always after any considerable rain. 
In many seasons paying crops may be secured by this system, 
where, if an attempt is made to grow crops every year, the failure 
will be total for both years. 
With this system the dry land farmer who has one hundred and 
sixty acres under cultivation will each year have eighty acres in crops, 
and eighty acres which he will have to till regularly, but upon which 
nothing will be growing. In Logan county a farmer has been quite 
successful in following a modification of this plan. . He raises three 
crops in four years. The first season no crop is grown, but the land 
is kept thoroughly cultivated. In the fall, winter wheat is sown. 
After harvest the ground is immediately disked, and, as soon as 
convenient, plowed and harrowed. The following year corn is planted 
and well cultivated, the cultivation in part having the same influence 
as a summer fallow. The following year wheat is grown, and the 
next year the rotation is started again with a summer fallow for the 
whole season. 
Weeds act as pumps constantly at work taking the water needed 
for the crops out of the soil and evaporating it into the air. 
SUB SURFACE PACKING. 
Usually on the Plains when soil is turned over with the plow, 
it is so dry that an imperfect connection is made with the unstirred 
ground beneath, and the soil that has been broken up by the plow 
